Hey all! I hope everyone’s first (or second, for some of you) week of school is going well. I also hope you’re ready for some Reader Art of the Week!

This week’s art comes to us courtesy of blog reader Amanda. Check out the cool cloud shot below:

Nice, huh? Amanda tells me she took the shot on a recent sailing trip to the Toronto Islands, and I think she captured the texture of the cloud perfectly. But wait: there’s more to this RAotW than meets the eye!

At first, Amanda thought the cloud looked like a duck, and she modified the photo at Paint.NET to show us just what she saw. Here’s how that worked out:

Pretty convincing, no? But wait: there’s still more! Amanda’s dad thought the cloud looked like something else. Here’s another modified version of the shot:

Wow! What do you think, blog readers? Does it look more like a duck or a witch? Does anyone think it looks like anything else? Let us know in the comments below!

Many thanks to Amanda for sending in the shots and letting us in on the debate. I think it’s going to create some great conversation in the comments.

This week’s art comes to us in the form of photography (first photo in a long while!), and it comes to us courtesy of blog reader Madeleine. Check it out:

I really like how this picture has a sense of drama: the setting is tropical, but the clouds are a little foreboding, you know?

It tells a bit of a story, too: my eyes immediately went to the lone person on the left-hand side of the shot. What’s he up to? Is he a golfer? Groundskeeper? Time traveler?! We may never know, but it sure is fun to guess!

Many thanks to Madeleine for heeding the RAotW call and sending in her photo. If YOU want to be like Madeleine (be like Madeleine! It’s cool!), send me YOUR photos, poems, stories, or drawings at owlblog@owlkids.com.

chickaDEE is so happy to have had the chance to work with the super-talented Elisa Gutiarrez for the Arts and Crafts issue. She created Letter Lunch, the wordless story about two kids trying to feed their imagination by finding alphabet letters around their neighbourhood and beyond.

I thought it would be neat to show you how Elisa creates her art. Her art style is called mixed media because she uses different techniques to create one great piece of art.

Check out her cool process below!

First, Elisa draws pictures onto white paper, then traces them onto thick, coloured paper to make the backgrounds and the characters.

Then Elisa cuts everything out of the paper.

She sticks masking tape on the back of the cut-outs so she can move them around and see what looks best.

Elisa tapes down the backgrounds first, then the characters. Then she adds stickers, and uses stamps to make some of the designs. She also uses coloured pencils to add more designs and colour.

When she is happy with how it looks, she gets the image digitally scanned. Then she uploads it into a computer program called Photoshop and uses that to lay everything out on the page!

I think the story turned out amazing. Did you get a chance to check it out? Let me know what you thought of the story or Elisa’s art in the comment section below!

I love art! One of my favourite places to go see art is the city of Chicago. I visited Chicago back in October and I had a great time visiting their museums and looking at the sculptures in the parks. Here’s one of my favourite sculptures I saw in Chicago called Windy City Dinosaur.

Cool, huh? Since I enjoy art so much, one of my favourite issues to work on is definitely chickaDEE’s annual Arts and Crafts issue. I had lots of fun researching art world records for the Did You Know? page. Click on the links for more info on these arty records.